MOBILE, Alabama -- At least one in every 15 private-sector workers in Mobile County is now employed by a foreign-owned company, one mark of how international investment is remaking the region's economy.

That share is likely to rise in the near future. Austal USA and ThyssenKrupp AG plan to hire 3,000 more workers between them in the next few years. And new foreign flags will soon fly over landmark area business. Mexico's Grupo Bimbo is spending $959 million to buy Sara Lee Corp.'s bread-baking business, which includes the Beltline Highway plant that was born as Smith's Bakery. China's AVIC International Holding Corp. is awaiting approvals for its $186 million purchase of Teledyne Continental Motors, the Brookley Aeroplex-based maker of piston aircraft engines.

More announcements may be coming. Gov. Robert Bentley indicated Friday, without mentioning the company by name, that China's Golden Dragon Precise Copper Tubing has chosen Thomasville for a $100 million, 200-job plant.

"The mark of a competitive economy is one that can attract these companies," said Nancy McLernon, president of the Organization for International Investment, a Washington, D.C., group representing U.S. units of foreign firms. "These companies have an ever-wider choice of locations."

History of Gulf Coast foreign investment

The history of foreign investment along the Gulf Coast runs back to the Scottish traders who dominated the region's commercial life when it was ruled by Great Britain and Spain. And European firms helped pioneer the region's chemical sector. Courtaulds, a deceased British firm whose local remanants live on under Austria's Lenzing AG, once employed 1,000 making rayon in Axis. Swiss-owned Ciba Geigy opened its plant in McIntosh in 1952. Employment peaked there at around 1,800 in 1991, long before it passed into the hands of Germany's BASF SE, the current owner.

Austal and ThyssenKrupp's big expansions mark a new era, though.

According to a Press-Register count, around 13,000 employees and permanent contractors now work for international firms in Mobile, Baldwin, Conecuh and Washington counties in Alabama, as well as in Jackson County, Miss. More than 9,500 of those work in Mobile County, where employees of foreign companies now exceed 6.6 percent of the overall private workforce.

That's well above the 4.8 percent of the workforce employed by foreign-owned companies in both Alabama and the nation in 2008, the last federal figures available. It trails the concentration of international employers in some states, though. In 2008, Bureau of Economic Analysis found, 8.2 percent of private-sector Delaware workers drew paychecks from companies based abroad, the most of any state.

Though the overall numbers of workers are lower than in Mobile, the foreign-employed share of the workforce is higher in Conecuh and Washington counties. In Washington County, 15 percent or more of all private employees work for BASF or its contractors, although that share will shrink as BASF cuts employment. And around 9 percent of all private workers in Conecuh County work for South Korean auto parts maker Guyoung Tech or Italian soil control firm Tenax. Employees of international firms are much smaller shares of the workforce in Baldwin and Jackson counties.

Foreign investment: By the numbers

Foreign firms invested about $195 billion in the United States in 2010. That was up 44 percent from 2009, but still well below the 2008 number of $330 billion and the all-time high in 2000.

The Organization for International Investment said $55 billion of foreign investment in 2010 was related to new and expanding plants and offices, creating 123,000 jobs. Just more than half of those were in manufacturing.

Companies typically enter the United States to reach its huge domestic market -- even larger when Canada and Mexico are considered as part of the North American Free Trade Area.

"You could support from outside the United States, but it would be a lot more difficult," said John Coburn, the chairman and chief executive officer of VT Systems, the American holding company for units of Singapore Technologies Engineering Ltd.

ST Engineering set up its airplane maintenance base at what is now Mobile's Brookley Aeroplex in 1991. It bought Halter Marine in 2002.

McLernon said that in recent years, companies have been also looking to serve global markets from the U.S., especially in areas where the U.S. has an edge.

At the broadest level, the United States' persistent trade deficit helps drive foreign investment, because companies abroad build up huge reserves of dollars from selling stuff to Americans.

"That's part of being an indebted country," said Douglas Woodward, a business professor at the University of South Carolina who wrote a book about foreign investment.

Foreign companies also under economic pressures

International companies have been subject to the same economic pressures as domestic ones, though. The economic output of foreign-owned companies shrank slightly in 2008 as some large foreign operations were sold and as financial firms suffered. For example, Canada's West Fraser Timber Co. Ltd. closed sawmills in Citronelle and McDavid, Fla., in 2008, amid the housing bust.

Foreign-owned companies are much more likely to be involved in international trade than American-based firms, the Bureau of Economic Analysis has found.

That's in part because they have more of an international orientation. David Britten, head of the North American division for Sweden's SSAB, said that Canadian-owned IPSCO paid little attention to the world beyond the NAFTA zone.

"Now we're manufacturing products that go literally all around the world," Britten said of SSAB's mills in Axis and Iowa.

The heavy transborder commerce also stems partly from connections to parent firms. Foreign-owned units shipped 18.1 percent of all exports in 2008, half to the parent, BEA figures show. The same firms brought in 26.9 percent of all imports, four-fifths from foreign parents. Foreign-owned subsidiaries accounted for $335 billion of the total 2008 U.S. trade deficit in goods of $835 billion.

One advantage of international firms, in part because they are so heavily concentrated in manufacturing, is that their jobs tend to be higher-paying.

Woodward said that another plus for a local economy is that newcomers tend to bring special skills and technology that they've developed. "These are very competitive firms," he said.

For example, Bay Minette's Quincy Compressor has been able to exchange technology and ideas with Atlas Copco after the Swedish firm bought Quincy for $190 million in 2009.

"It's allowed us to enhance our design and manufacturing capabilities and strengthen our product portfolio," said Keith Schumacher, the vice president of marketing and development.

Foreign investment does come with downsides

There are obvious drawbacks.

"The main thing is there is a loss of ownership," Woodward said. That has stirred complaints in the U.S., especially for assets seen as nationally sensitive, such as ports or oil companies.

McLernon notes that the federal government has a national security review process to guard against such problems. She fears that the U.S. may miss out on jobs because of economic nationalism. "We want to make sure we leave our economy open to global investment," she said.

Others, though, say the lure of jobs in a period of high unemployment outweigh those concerns.

"I read all that stuff about outsourcing from other areas," Coburn said. "We don't outsource. We insource. We provide jobs for Americans."